Thursday, February 21, 2013

This means WAR

Yet baseball's front offices, the people in charge of $100 million
payrolls and all your hope for the 2013 season, side overwhelmingly with
data. For team executives, the basic framework of WAR -- measuring
players' total performance against a consistent baseline -- is
commonplace, used by nearly every front office, according to insiders.
The writers who helped guide the creation of WAR over the decades --
including Bill James, Sean Smith and Keith Woolner -- work for teams
now. As James told me, the war over WAR has ceased where it matters.
"There's a practical necessity for measurements like that in a front
office that make it irrelevant whether you like them or you don't."